Chevrolet has released numbers for Corvette’s 2016 model year and although sales were soft though the winter, the final tally has probably made GM very, very happy. The National Corvette Museum (NCM) brings us the story.
A total of 40,689 units–up 19%–were moved by Chevrolet. This is a phenomenal achievement and a testament to the C7 Corvette’s intrinsic excellence that it’s still turning out these volumes at the apex of it’s product cycle.
The highest selling model was the Stingray Coupe, garnering 52.6%, followed by the Z06 Coupe with 28.4%. Stingray Convertibles grabbed 12.4% and Z06 Convertibles were the rarest at 6.7%.
Collector car folks pay attention, here. The special edition packages might be the ’57 Fuelies of the future. Only 371 of the Twilight Blue Design Package, 535 of the Spice Red Design Package, and 454 of the Jet Black Suede Design Package were produced. For the special C7.R Edition there were 570 Coupe Z06s and 80 Convertible Z06s built.
According to the NCM, “We often get asked why so many of our raffle Corvettes have automatic transmissions. One look at the numbers will tell you why. 31,440 of the Corvettes made for MY 2016 have the 8-speed paddle shift automatic transmission. This includes the Z06, which for the MY 2015 offered the automatic transmission for the first time.”
The NCM also reported color breakdown as well. “Most popular was Arctic White with 21% followed by Black (17%), Torch Red (15%), Shark Gray (12%), Laguna Blue (9%), Long Beach Red (8%), Corvette Racing Yellow (7%), Blade Silver (6%), Daytona Sunrise Orange (2%), Night Race Blue (2%) and even though it was not available until very late in the model year, Admiral Blue still snagged 1% (or 336 cars).
Thanks to you, the Museum had the privilege of delivering 675 of the Corvettes. If you are planning to order a new Corvette for 2017 we hope you’ll consider participating in our Delivery Programs.”
The current Corvette has resonated with buyers. Moving 40K units rivals the late ’70s, early ’80s for Corvette sales and clearly is a big money maker for Chevrolet. All this begs the question, why change the formula?
With all the speculation of what’s going on at Bowling Green, Chevrolet would be absolutely insane to walk away from the proven, front engined, RWD blueprint the C7 rides on.
And when the General makes money, you can bet that messing with a proven formula will take a lot of supporting data. With details of the rumored C8/Zora mid-engined car still hazy, we’ll just can’t believe a C8 will move to a single, mid-engine platform.
On the other hand, big sales numbers have dealt a crushing blow–value wise–to the C4 and C5 Gen ‘Vettes. As we’ve said before, with 1.6M Corvettes built since 1953, the Corvette is a mass produced commodity and later models especially, aren’t that rare.
Maybe if Chevy moves the Corvette upmarket, they can shore up resale value by a limiting production. That’s great but that means fewer cars out the door and that’ll go over like a lead zeppelin. The best of both worlds is creating two different ‘Vette models and here at Corvette Online, that’s what we think we’ll see when the C8 appears.